What’s New in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V Webinar – Q & A Follow Up

Earlier this week, fellow Microsoft Cloud and Datacenter MVP Aidan Finn and I put on a webinar about what’s new in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V. As is the norm for all Altaro sponsored webinars, we had a Q & A segment near the end to attempt to answer some of your many questions regarding this topic. Unfortunately, we were unable to get to all the questions during the time allotted. However, we’ve compiled the list of unanswered questions below, and between Aidan and Myself, we’ve answered all the questions for you!

Revisit the Webinar

First off, if you haven’t seen the webinar, or you’d like to re-watch it, we’ve included the recording below for your viewing pleasure!

The Questions

Q: Seems like Server 2016 is getting farther and farther away from SAN architecture.  Do you see that continuing?

 WS2016 still has improved functionality for SAN customers. For example, you can replicate your LUNs using Storage Replica without purchasing expensive SAN replication licensing, and Storage QoS will improve VM performance on CSVs. 

 But Microsoft is making a big bet on commodity hardware. A lot of this comes from their learning from Azure (there are 0 SANs in the big 3 clouds). You can build storage bigger, faster, and cheaper using commodity hardware – sure it’s not as packaged as a SAN but do you want to give those companies 80% margin? Anyone in the cloud business (internal or as a service provider) needs to be lean, and software-defined storage makes that possible.

 By the way, thanks to cluster-in-a-box, software-defined storage makes Hyper-V clustering affordable for the small-mid business too!

Q: For SMEs, do you recommend running azure on premises?

No, I don’t. Azure Stack will be just too big for a small-mid enterprise. Use on-premises virtualization (Hyper-V), and if you need cloud, then add on an Azure subscription. You can treat it as one stretched deployment with Azure AD Connect (shared sign-on for single username & password) and site-to-site VPN.

Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade via Technet.

Q: It’s important to disable C-States for the hyper-v hosts?

The usual names in server tech (Dell, HP, etc) all have best practices for BIOS/UEFI configurations of their machines. All of them instruct you how to best configure the power setup. This is important to get the best possible performance for VMs and for Live Migration. 

Q: Any idea about required feature support at hardware level for new direct hardware (SR-IOV) exposure to VM’s? Lots of older hardware might be capable of Hyper-V but not SR-IOV compatible. Will new virtualisation hardware exposure require whole new set of hardware?

WS2016 Hyper-V will require Second Leval Address Translation (SLAT) which comes on Nehalem or later processors, so really old hardware won’t run the latest version of Hyper-V anyway. 

SR-IOV support from the host is a start – you need firmware and BIOS/UEFI support for DDA to function. The devices must also cooperate. The following post goes into detail and links to a script that can test your hardware: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/virtualization/2015/11/20/discrete-device-assignment-machines-and-devices/ 

Q: Can you boot directly from a PCIE SSD that has been passed through directly to the VM?

No.

Q: I thought checkpoints currently use VSS?

Currently VSS in 2012 R2 Hyper-V is primarily used via backup applications. Checkpoints themselves do not currently use this technology. The VM is simply put into a paused state briefly while the checkpoint file is created and the write redirection occurs. For more information on the process and how it’s different in 2016, see the below links.

2012 R2 Checkpoints and Snapshots Overview

Using Checkpoints to Revert Virtual Machines to a Previous State (2016)

Q: What is the release data for Windows Server 2016

The answer to that question is unknown at this time. Microsoft has made no formal announcement on this, or provided any indication as to when the product will be released.

Q: is vm performance more in line with VMware with 2016?

From a performance stand point, the two vendors have been pretty neck and neck for the past couple of years. When talking with customers in the past, performance hardly ever came into the discussion. It always comes down to who’s ecosystem you want to be a part of, and what management tools your familiar with.

Q: Will there be feature discrepancy between Hyper-V Server and the Hyper-V role in full server 2016?

It looks like Hyper-V Server 2016 will have technical feature parity with Windows Server 2016 Standard Hyper-V. Some features will be Datacenter edition only, such as S2D, Storage Replica, and Network Controller.

Q: Using DDA, can a VM now use serial ports on the Hyper-V host?

I don’t believe so.

Q: Any improvements with Hyper-V Replica?

Microsoft has announced that Hyper-V Replica will be supported with the new Shared VHDX format (guest clusters). 

Q: Do you know why Hyper-V are not capable to use USB host?

Actually, you can read how to do this on the Altaro blog: https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/installing-and-running-hyper-v-from-a-usb-stick/. HOWEVER, Microsoft will not support this if it is not done by the OEM (the server manufacturer), but I have not heard of any OEMs offering this option for Hyper-V. I’d be more interested in a boot from SD, which is not possible now.

Q: Are there any plans or news about hyper-v host backup? VMs are already covered by Altaro. What’s the best practice?

Our product is designed to backup and protect the VMs running on the hypervisor, not the hypervisor itself. Best practices state that the hypervisor ONLY be a hypervisor, with no other roles/features or file storage. This way, in the event of a host failure, you simple re-install the host operating system and recover your VMs.

Q: How do you anticipate Altaro licensing evolving with nested virtualization?

Altaro VM Backup will continue to be licensed at the host level, regardless of whether or not that host is a nested host or not. As an example, if you have 1 physical virtualization host, and 4 nested hosts running on top of it, and you would like to protect the VMs across all 5 of those hosts, you would need 5 licenses of Altaro VM Backup.

Q: Is the Altaro change block tracking for backups likely to be supported for both Windows 2012 R2 as well as Windows 2016?

Yes. We will support CBT in 2012 R2 and we will be using the new built in Resilient Change Tracking (RCT) features in Windows Server 2016.

Wrap-Up

That wraps things up for the unanswered questions. We hoped you enjoyed the webinar, and if you come up with any additional follow up questions, be sure to use the comments section below for those inquiries. We’re happy to address any additional questions.

Thanks for watching!